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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
    #17930811 - 03/09/13 07:38 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Space Monkey said:
There's plenty of evidence to point out that many specific religious deities don't exist, but no evidence at all to suggest there's no creator at all.



There's no evidence to suggest there is a creator, thus it's not even really a question. :shrug:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: lessismore]
    #17930929 - 03/09/13 08:03 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

mio said:
Only some believers like a few christians,jehova vitnesses who went too far with their religion need to convert/tell others about it

Most believers don't


then there are the atheists, we hear about them all the time  just like those trying to convert

blinded by the ego perhaps, that they know the only truth?



You're just conjecturing blindly. Christianity especially is HUGE on sharing the word and converting. Atheists are no more likely to share their views without prompting than christians.

Atheists like to discuss on a discussion forum. You don't hear about it all the time, you hear about a vocal minority trying to discuss their opinions and understand others beliefs. I don't know why you'd consider that egotistical, but it seems like the typical attacking response to questioning faith. :shrug:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: PirateSwazey]
    #17934026 - 03/10/13 03:13 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

PirateSwazey said:
so as an atheist where do you stand on the after life? do you believe consciousness outlives the physical realm and transcends to another dimension? or does the light turn off and whats done is done is done? and if this is your ending how does that effect your view on life?

curious to see your perspective.



I don't think any person can claim to know what happens after our bodies die. The only thing that is supported by any evidence at all is that our physical bodies die and our brains cease to function. Thus it's pretty safe to say that we're not maintaining any form of consciousness as we know it. How does this effect how I view my life? My life, then, is the most important thing in my life (lol). I'm not living here as some sort of test, I'm having my one life that I get. This is my one chance to live, to experience, to enjoy and so I do. Also, this is my one chance to impact the world and to really do anything that can outlive me so I make positive change in the world. :shrug:

I think an athiest view of the afterlife is the view that gives life the highest importance and value. In religion with an afterlife, this life is valuable only as a transition state or a test. In a view of life without an afterlife, this is all that matters.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: clam_dude]
    #17935458 - 03/10/13 07:35 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

clam_dude said:
Yes, this has been covered before in the thread.  Maybe pages 10-20 somewhere :shrug: It has gotten a little out of hand, hasn't it. 

Nobody wants to combine words. Atheism is a subset of agnosticism.  As an atheist, I don't believe there is a "god".  But I don't absolutely "know" that there isn't a god.  So I'm also agnostic. 

I believe that "god" is extremely unlikely, so if I say that I'm "agnostic," it doesn't really represent my position.  It implies that I'm somewhere between a believer and a non-believer.  But I am a non-believer.  And I don't have a dogmatic position that cannot be changed.  Therefore, atheist describes my views most accurately.  Every atheist that I have met says pretty much the same thing.  It's incredibly frustrating to have people come at me from all sides accusing me of claiming things with absolute certainty that I can't possibly know.  I'm not claiming anything other than the fact that there is no evidence for a god, which there isn't.



Another atheist here feeling the exact same way. :smirk::thumbup:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
    #17935527 - 03/10/13 07:49 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Space Monkey said:
No, I mean doesn't. NO ONE CAN KNOW, anyone who claims otherwise is stupid and full of shit. Allllllll it is, is belief. That's what all these categories are, categories of belief. Believing there is no God but admitting you do not know does NOT make you agnostic, it just means you're an atheist who's not stupid and full of shit.



I don't believe there is no god, I just don't think there's a reason to even think there is a god in the first place. There's no evidence so there's no question. I don't believe there is no toothfairy, or santa or unicorns even though I don't and can't KNOW they don't exist.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
    #17935634 - 03/10/13 08:07 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Part of me actually feels like you can know there's not a god because the only evidence of any sort of god is a human construct. The question of a god is not posed by nature. There's not even a concrete conceptualization of god. And thus, there is no god. :strokebeard3:

Like your example of 1+1=2, you can also know then that 1+1=/=5 because never in your experience is that given to you as true. If god is never given in experience, can you gain any knowledge from that?

Thoughts?


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: sonamdrukpa]
    #17941776 - 03/11/13 11:58 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

It's not disbelief because we don't see god as something to even consider as a question. If there's no evidence why should I have to say I don't believe in it? No one says they don't believe in unicorns.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: trevorr]
    #17942737 - 03/12/13 06:57 AM (10 years, 10 months ago)

I think pretty much the Alan Watts-esque claim that we are all god is just hippies holding on to what their species has adapted to believe to protect the survival instinct. You feel infinite and connected on psychedelics and you see pretty things and you can empathize. That doesn't make you god, a human construct tied to divinity and not based in anything actually given in intuition but solely in misinterpretations of what we don't understand.

People say: we are god, you just don't understand. I say, if you can't explain what the hell you're talking about it's probably because you're extrapolating way more than simple experience actually gives you (which is what we do as humans, I'm not faulting anyone for doing that).


--------------------
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"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: trevorr]
    #17942926 - 03/12/13 08:32 AM (10 years, 10 months ago)

We can explain what life is in rational, cognitive thought processes. It's not a feeling or experience, it's a stasis of thermodynamic regulation and molecular/cellular cooperation. It's incredible, that's for sure, but it's not indescribable. All the processes of life are directly resultant of cellular communication.

My doors are open, nothing mystical comes to me because I do not seek it out. Anything you seek out will come to you because you determine your own perception of reality. If you want to believe in god, your subconscious will help you to recognize patterns in the world that it correlates with that concept.

The soul is an idea constructed out of the survival instinct. There's nothing to actually suggest a soul.

We actually know that the thoughts and mind are directly linked to the communication between all the material/physical constructs that exist in your brain. There's nothing to suggest a divine matrix.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kukaracha]
    #17942940 - 03/12/13 08:39 AM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Kukaracha said:
It's funny you mention that, because one of the main classical arguments for the existance of god is that man cannot form new ideas by himself. If the idea of god came to man, it therefore means it exists somehow, just like unicorns are inspired from horses.
It's an interesting approach, because it is in fact impossible to invent new concepts and values that are completely foreign from our experience. So, where does "god" come from?



Humans create new concepts that aren't given in experience all the time. Aliens, santa, the tooth fairy, imaginary friends, infinity, weightlessness (before space travel), etc. Any child can imagine up things that are not given in experience. One of the main arguments against god is that for god to exist is that he would need to be given in intuition, to everyone.

I think the concept of "god" comes from a complex series of cognitive processes. First, there's a realization of impending death. This spurs, in all creatures, survival instincts which vary widely. In humans rationalizing things as to minimize anxiety/cognitive dissonance is a HUGE factor in perception of the world. As evolved beings we can also shape our environment and create new things. So, we have this death anxiety and we see that for new things to be made that are relevant to us, we must create them. Thus we come up with the idea that there must be more to this life after death due to death anxiety and our cognition of interacting with the environment helps us to come up with a vague idea of the "creator."

I don't see any other way that the concept of "god" is given by nature. It's certainly never given in intuition in my life, which leads me to a likely proposition that in fact god is not universal or based in reality as we know it.

I don't think it's coincidence that ancient religions always use divinity to explain things that science now knows are not divine. (The sun is not a god, for example, and there are no gods on Mt. Olympus reining over the people) I think that anything we think is inexplicable, consciousness for example, is just cause and effect like anything else in the world. (Which is pretty much what scientific discovery has always proven.)


--------------------
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"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kukaracha] * 1
    #17943594 - 03/12/13 11:57 AM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Kukaracha said:
Are these concepts really new? As far as I know, Lovecraft was the only one to try and create extraterrestrial beings from scratch, but he was never able to really describe them. In fact, most representations of aliens are antrhopomorphic. A fairy is just a girl with wings, Santa is an old man inspired by St. Nicholas, etc... all of these are just variations, transformations. None of them is strictly new.
(Must I add that children are a very bad example, in the sense that they are among the most uncreative members of our species, given their limited experience? Dinosaurs, spaceships... it's as if they all shared the same tiny, standardized imaginative world).



And in that same vein, god has always been anthropomorphized until modern science came in and made god irrelevant. Now people cling to the idea of god by redefining it.

I think calling anything we can't understand god is just a copout and it's unnecessary.

Quote:

I also don't see how it's one of the main arguments against him, since nearly every single human being is familiar with the concept of deity. The ones who are not would maybe be Kamala or Kasper Hauser, but even then you could argue that if these individuals were to form primitive communities, they would come up with the idea of god eventually. The argument that the idea potentially exists in each one of us still stands.



I'm not familiar with the concept of a deity that isn't just an anthropomorphism. I'm not familiar with the concept of divinity outside of what religious people claim. Divinity is not given in experience or intuitively. I don't think that you can speculate that the concept is potentially inherent because religion is SOOO influenced by socialization. We can't be certain if the same concept of divinity would come up without someone else first introducing it to us, so we have to see if divinity is given in intuition. I, and Edmund Husserl, strongly assert that if there were a god or some sort of divinity it would have to be given in intuition (in experience). I've never been given divinity in experience and so I don't see how the concept would possibly arise without society's influence.

Quote:


I agree with this, and I believe that it is one of the strongest arguments against anthropomorphic gods, along with their particularities and ethnocentrist qualities. However, this does not work against other representations, such as the worship of Spinoza's god or, in short "mother nature".



"Mother nature" is just a metaphor for nature. Nature is nature, you can call it god if you want but that doesn't make it divine. I don't understand why you would call nature god either, god implies something ineffable and divine. Nature is something we can explore and understand. :shrug:

Quote:


How can you know that it wouldn't have come eventually, if children are thaught the idea in their early days?



Because plenty of athiests are taught to be religious and see religion in their lives until they mature and realize all aspects of god in their lives are due to conditioning. I don't think that, without the influence of society on the subject, any child would come to to conclusion of god in today's modern age where science explains things that god was once used to explain.


Quote:


But there are always realms that lie outside of the scientific method, like ethics or metaphysics, or even outside of logic, like the idea of the beginning or the end of the universe, or of absolute non-existence (as in, before and after the universe), or even cognition itself.
We could play a game to illustrate that last point. What's my grandmother's name? Lucia. How do I know it? I just know it. I have the result of the cognitive process ("Her name is Lucia"), but the process is unattainable, just like an eye cannot watch itself - only images of itself.
Hell, we believe in a lot of crazy things. Infinity, or non-existence are two very, very crazy things. The Big Bang? A very, very crazy thing. Do we know the science behind this? I don't. And yet I believe.



The eye can watch itself. I think you'd be interested in phenomenology, which is all about examining perception and cognition (which you can do, you just have to go through some logical reductions). You know your grandmother's name is Lucia because this was told to you many times as you were young. Your young brain began to associate your grandmother's face with the name Lucia. You now have a physical structure in your head that physically encodes that association. Every time you think of your grandmother and her name, that part of your brain will light up and we can view this using brain imaging technologies. In a few years time we'll have the brain mapped like the human genome and it'll be easy to locate cognitive functions in the brain and see how they are interrelated to cause consciousness.

You can know the science behind the big bang, and you should find out the science behind something before you "believe" it. I don't think anything is outside the scope of the scientific method but rather some things are outside the scope of our current technological capabilities.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kukaracha] * 1
    #17944380 - 03/12/13 03:16 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Kukaracha said:

Not really. The christian Trinity is much older than modern science, and so is Buddhism (which some argue is theist).



So? Something being old doesn't mean it's right. Early humans were more wrong than right. You usually have to be wrong before you're right. A species when it evolves does not have all the answers and reformations are made along the way.

Quote:


Well, I find it weird to quote Husserl here, since not only did he note "the impossibility of admitting [god] into phenomenological investigation", but qualified himself as a christian too.
I don't think he meant that in your way, either. I never studied him, but if I remember correctly he does argue that god is possibly within us but that we have to be receptive to his presence to aknowledge it. From that point of view, a child could have been presented with the idea of god and rejected it before having the chance to aknowledge its manifestation.



I'm receptive to god's presence, don't assume that because I'm an atheist I've shut myself off to divinity. I'm completely open and receptive to it, it's just not a part of reality as I know it.

Quote:

Socialization also doesn't seem to be an obstacle on the way of this argument, because the idea had to start by itself somewhere and because the idea spread around and grew in pretty remote places.



If the idea had to start somewhere and spread out it is neither universal nor given inherently.

Quote:


Well it's a metaphore to you, but look around, just on these forums! Protect the earth, protect nature! Protect what, life? "Things"? "Natura" is the future participle of the latin "natura", roughly "things that will be born" (by themselves), in short, everything that isn't man-made (but man himself was born by himself, so...).
I mean, how can we understand "everything"? We can build models to try to grasp it, but it doesn't mean that we understand why, how, when, etc.
Things, in general, are fascinatingly mysterious, don't you think?



We do understand the hows and whys of life. We do not understand things on the largest scale very well or on the very smallest of scales but as technology increases we are able to zoom in and outwards, however we do understand things on the level we interact with them very well.

Quote:

Again, science does not explain ethics or metaphysics! Nor does it explain most things, really. This is just the beginning...
In fact, I believe that while the first stage in the path of maturity is blind obedience, total rejection of religion is simply a second, and no less simplistic step. Religion is a fascinating phenomenon in the immense field of spirituality.



Science does explain ethics. Ethics develop out of group interactions where over time as species have become socialized, evolutionarily the organisms who fit into the group the best (the most ethical, generally, as they respect others autonomy) have behavioral traits which are selected for socially in the way the group raises young and genetically in that they are more likely to survive and pass on their genetic disposition to their child. Also, I don't think metaphysics is something science needs to explain. Like god, there needs to be evidence of the metaphysical first. What do we have evidence of that is metaphysical? Metaphysicists don't even widely agree on particulars of the subject.

Science does explain many many many things. It explains more things than it is unable to explain. What can science not explain? Religion is a social construct and spirituality doesn't have any basis in intuition (in the world), IMO, but rather its basis is in our interpretation of the world.

I'm not rejecting anything, which is what everyone likes to assume about an athiest, I'm completely considering religion and spirituality and I'm not finding it compelling, rational or based in reality at all. Give me evidence of how it's based in reality or given in experience, I'll be surprised if you even attempt anything more than a vague suggestion of what could be possible.

Quote:


And... how does what you said actually say anything about what thoughts are? Sounds like pure scientism to me! "Physical structure that physically encodes in that part of the brain that lights up." How can you talk like that and then criticize religious people for putting empty labels on the unknown? :p Neurologists and psychologists themselves will eagerly recognize that 1) their discipline is young and that 2) we know little, very little about what the human brain is and what thoughts really are.



Thoughts are communication between neurons in the brain. Find one scientist who will disagree with that right now. We're gaining knowledge about the brain every day. To say that we know very little about what the brain is shows me you don't know much about neuroscience. The brain is analagous to a biological computer. We know that it is full of neurons, we know the structure of these neurons, we know how they communicate, we know the chemical signaling they use. We know what the brain is. We don't know the exact location of each specific function, though we know generalized regions. Any neurologist who would say we don't know what the human brain is or what thoughts are would be a fraud.

People like to think there's something mystical to consciousness

Quote:

Can you really write down your introspective though process or do you aknowledge that you can only access the results of your thoughts?
As a comparison, it's like seeing your computer screen, and see the images on it without being able to tell what they are or how they got there.



I can write down my introspective process. As a student I have attuned myself to being metacognative of my thought processes and the mental connections I have. You can be mindful of your mental processes, but most people live unreflectively. Just like in a computer, if you're well learned on the inner workings, you can take some level of control over the functioning through actively coding without taking the whole thing apart. :smirk:

Quote:


Wait, so you understand the principles behind the Big Bang? The implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems? The statistical criticism of Dr. Séralini's study on GMOs?
Are you really some sort of reputed scholar or are you just being preposterous? Or maybe you consider reading half of a Wikipedia entry as "understanding"?



I'm not saying I know everything but in the age of the internet if you want to know something, you can and you should. It's all completely accessible.

Quote:

And science being only limited by technology? As in epistemologically absolutely inclusive? Right, so we'll someday be able to scientifically prove that god does or does not exist, that murder is bad, that the meaning of life is to plant potatoes and that the road to happiness is the positive solution to x²=x+1.



I do think science is only limited by technology, aside from physical constraints but I think we've proven that we can break even those barriers with appropriate research and experimentation, and that a lot of scientists would be inclined to agree. We don't have to prove god doesn't exist because that's assuming there's a reason to believe god exists in the first place. "Someone else said he does," isn't enough reason.

Quote:

I mean, we were lurking around scientism and now we just stepped on it big time. Do you realize that you're actually hurting science by bastardizing a method with very fragile (though beautiful) ideals?



Not scientism, but rationality.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




Edited by JoieDeVivre (03/12/13 03:22 PM)


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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kukaracha]
    #17944805 - 03/12/13 04:37 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

I've studied Husserl intensely and have written a large paper of it which was approved and commended by one of today's biggest Husserl Scholars. It's interesting that he didn't take issue with any of the things I've said in this thread which we have discussed at length in class and which I mentioned in said paper. :lol:

I meant to say that the mind, not the eye, can observe itself. (Excuse one big mistake in a huge thread full of long responses, please) If you disagree you're saying we have no faculty of metacognition. Also an eye can observe other eyes and thus its own function can be cognized, looking in the mirror is observing the present image of itself. We're only ever observing reflections of light from anything, so why is seeing something in a mirror any less of observation than seeing the light reflected off of it first?

You quoted this:
Quote:

Most of the recent advances in brain science have involved knowledge of the biology of single neurons and synapses, not knowledge of patterns of connection and other aspects of the brain as a system.



Which is exactly what I said. We know what the brain is. We don't know the exact connections, very specific regionalities and the exact systems of which areas interact to produce what thought.

I'm not going to continue a discussion where you're calling me delusional because I'm saying that there's nothing spiritual, divine or religious given inherently. Give me an example of how this is delusional.

Like I said you're not going to be able to give me any evidence of how it is actually a part of lived experience. You're giving vague proofs of the possibility of spirituality, which I never denied. I know it's possible, just like unicorns are technically within the realm of possibility, now show me how it's likely or given outside of someone telling you stories about it.

I could quote a bunch of people agreeing with me, too, but that wouldn't make it any more true. I could look up any quote on any subject and find support for any ridiculous position if I wanted to, I'm here to have a discussion not to see who can come up with the most supporting opinions of other people.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kukaracha]
    #17945132 - 03/12/13 05:35 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

No harm no foul, I understand how tone can easily be lost over the internet. :yesnod:

I feel that you're imposing scientism on me because you don't understand what I'm saying or perhaps I'm not expressing myself well because I'm multitasking. Either way, I'm not claiming that science is the only worthwhile way of understanding the world, as a philsopher and writer myself I would never say that. However I do think the scientific method is the best way of understanding the world and is really the structure of how rationality works. We make an internal hypothesis, we experience the world and we revise our understanding of the world based on our experience's confirmation or negation of our hypothesis. In waking consciousness, we don't actively reflect on this process but I think it's inherent to all the ways of which we interact with the world.

You still haven't given me evidence of anything that science can not explain that is actually given universally (in lived experience/in intuition/etc). I'm open to that possibility, I'm never dead set on any particular view and if something comes up that seems legitimate to me I'll definitely be open to it. As it stands now I think it's entirely possible that given no technological limit science would explain the world exhaustively and I don't see any evidence of anything metaphysical/spiritual.

I think science has found the right method for examining the natural world. :shrug:

(I did want to just use a particular example of Husserl's idea that I find to be eloquent in describing my own personal experience with spirituality. He and I diverge in a lot of ways on this subject and of course I'm still fleshing out my own opinions which is why I engage in discussion here. I think he, and a lot of other philosophers, cling on to religion as an eloquent idea, metaphor or possibility as well without real religious conviction.)


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: jvm]
    #17945207 - 03/12/13 05:45 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

jvm said:
Are you guys still arguing this concept? Move on from the drama, the discussion will always recycle itself as long as religion and a "belief system" is projected through the ego. So really, who fucking cares? :awebig: Have an awesome day regardless of who believes in microscopes or wet fart dreams. :rainbowcloud:



This is a discussion forum, so people enjoy discussing things they find interesting. Personally I'm fascinated by religious belief/faith and I'm submerged in a culture where atheism is still the less accepted position so I like to discuss it.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: zzripz] * 1
    #17950673 - 03/13/13 07:13 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Science looks to understand why anomalies happen, I don't know why you would say science dismisses anomalies. Science is all about understanding anomalies, general cases and both in context of one another. Neuroscience tells us, for example, that there is a region of the brain that when stimulated will cause the experience of being in the presence of an entity, or a religious experience. This tells me that anomalies that religious people experience are based in the physicality of the brain rather than in something mystical going on in the world.


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: clam_dude]
    #17964251 - 03/16/13 12:23 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

It's ridiculous that this keeps going back to people vehemently arguing you're not really an athiest because you can't know despite that the etymology of the word clearly just says you're not a theist.

They just get all upset that you've "closed yourself off" to spirituality as if there's anything in this world that's spiritual without human interpretation.

:youseethisshit:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: something super extreme]
    #17964712 - 03/16/13 02:52 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

sVs said:

:thefuckisthis:
Well, then might I ask what the fuck you're doing in a debate-centric forum?



He's shoving his fingers in his ears and yelling at us. :smilingpuppy:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: clam_dude]
    #17965405 - 03/16/13 06:06 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

clam_dude said:
So if I tell you there's a people eating monster in my closet, and someone else says there's not, you're obligated to say "well maybe there is and maybe there isn't"?  That makes no sense.  Or if I say there are unicorns that circle the earth in space, you now have to be agnostic about it? 

If there is no reason to believe in something, there's just no reason to believe in it.  You're saying that if anybody suggests the existence of anything, we all have to be agnostic about it? Because you have "no information"?

"not having any information" means that there's no reason to believe it exists!



:kaneclap:

Wondering if anyone will finally grasp what you're trying to say here... :popcorn:






It seems so obvious to me that everyone who says you have to be an agnostic, not an athiest, is not "agnostic" about anything ridiculous like all the planets being made of ice cream and unicorns secretly inhabiting pluto and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry actually existing somewhere in the UK. Why is it so hard to believe, then, that since there is no experiential indication of a god we can safely assume god is as likely as unicorns on pluto? :confused:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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InvisibleJoieDeVivre
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Visionary Tools]
    #17965554 - 03/16/13 06:49 PM (10 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Visionary Tools said:
For something that supposedly doesn't exist, you get very angry about it.

Taking the premise of this topic: Atheism is the only rational position, then I don't want to be rational.

I don't want to submit to religion either, because it is a system of control, just like government.



So religion is a system of control but theism is not? :confused:


--------------------
Sapere aude

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."


UBUNTU- I am because we are.




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